CHAP. XIII.

THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE.

465

sought an asylum in the Carolinas. The traditionary hatred of the English for the French was shown at this time. For full ten years these French refugees were denied the privileges of citizenship in the land of their adoption.

Meanwhile a little colony of ten Scotch families who had fled from persecution in their native land, and led by the Presbyterian Lord Cardross, landed at Port Royal on the coast of South Carolina, and proceeded to plant a settlement there in 1682. The existence of that little colony was brief. The Spaniards claimed Port Royal as a dependency of St. Augustine; and in 1686, during the absence of Cardross in Britain, they attacked and dispersed his colony and laid waste their property. Some of them returned to Scotland, and others joined the colony between the Edisto and Santee rivers. The Huguenots, who infused warm blood into the veins of the Southern colony, and carried the sunshine of their buoyant natures into other American provinces, deserve more than a passing notice here. We have already considered their forlorn condition in the time of Coligni, a hundred years earlier. The decree of Henry the Fourth, issued from Nantes in 1598, giving them free toleration within his dominions, secured them from severe persecution. They had prospered, and had become, as a body, the best citizens of France.

When the profligate Louis the Fourteenth approached old age, he became the slave of a fascinating woman, widow of the comic poet Scarron, who is better known in history as Madame de Maintenon. She was then fifty years of age, but was still beautiful, graceful and witty, and wise and discreet in all her ways. The king, then forty-eight, fascinated by the charms of her mind and person, married her secretly. From that time she fashioned his future life. She had been a Calvinist, but was now a devoted daughter of the Church of Rome. When remorse for past sins clouded the mind of the king, she shed the light of religious consolation into its darkened recesses. He would pass whole days with her alone in a library of the palace, listening to her charming conversation or her reading from books of devotion. As amends for past misconduct, she persuaded him to take measures for the conversion of the Huguenots and to win them back to the Church of Rome.

This work was begun in earnest, by every species of bribery, and every means of coercion excepting actual personal violence. These Huguenots were driven from all public employments, and were reinstated only upon the condition of entering the church as communicants. They were persecuted by being subjected to all kinds of disabilities, social and political, and finding relief only in a profession of the Romish faith. These measures operated powerfully, and, in a degree, successfully. It was perceived that the surest

road to popular favor was by converting Huguenots, and Louvois, the Minister of War, determined to outdo Madame de Maintenon in this work, by the use of soldiers, whom he quartered on the Huguenots with orders to torment them in every possible way short of personal violence. These Protestants were forbidden to leave France, and so, like hunted deer driven to close quarters, they were dreadfully worried by the hounds. At length, following the advice of Madame de Maintenon, the king revoked the tolerant edict of Henry, and the Huguenots were exposed to the unbridled passions of the soldiery and the intolerance of religious bigots. So, Louis hoped he had gained the favor of Heaven and secured the salvation of his own soul.

The sufferings of the Huguenots were now horrible. The most cruel torments were used to "convert them. It is said that full ten thousand of them perished at the stake and other places of torture, for conscience sake. In the face of vigorous measures for preventing emigration, full five hundred thousand of these useful citizens, numbering multitudes of skilled mechanics, fled from their country, and so impoverished the kingdom. They created Huguenot villages in Germany. They swelled the army of William wherewith to win the throne of England. They filled a whole suburb of London, and introduced the art of silk-weaving into England. Some went to the Cape of Good Hope, and many of them sought peaceful homes among the American colonists. They were welcomed everywhere, and became blessings to every community among whom they settled. Many families were seated in New York and other colonies; but the warmer climate of the Carolinas was more congenial to these children of sunny France. They gave some of the best blood to the American colonies; and their descendants have borne a conspicuous part in building up our free Republic.

LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH.

The South Carolinians resisted all attempts to make them submit to the authority of the "Fundamental Constitutions." Annoyed by persistent

CHAP. XIII.

TURBULENCE IN THE CAROLINAS.

467

efforts to compel them to accept that form of government, they felt disposed to cast off all allegiance to the proprietors and the mother country. At that crisis, John Colleton, one of the owners, was appointed governor of the province, with full powers to bring the people into submission. That was in 1686. His administration of four years was a very turbulent one. Finally, his continual collisions with the people drove them into open rebellion. They seized the public records; imprisoned the secretary of the province; called a new Assembly, and defined the power of the governor. The latter, pleading the danger of an impending invasion of Indians or Spaniards, made it a pretext for calling out the militia, with whom he hoped to suppress the insurrection. He declared the province to be under martiallaw, and proposed to rule by its vigorous code.

The militia were a part of the people, and no troops appeared at the call He was of the governor. His act greatly exasperated the colonists. impeached, and banished from the province by the Assembly, in 1690. The Revolution in England at the same time was initiated in miniature in South Carolina.

During the turbulence at near the close of Colleton's administration, Seth Sothel arrived from North Carolina, pursuant to his sentence of banishment. He espoused the cause of the people against the proprietors, and the former, in the moment of their anger, unwisely chose him to be their governor. Their poor judgment was rebuked, and the people were punished for this rash act by the conduct of the new governor. While he followed the popular will in opposing the claims of the proprietors to political domination, he plundered the people, trampled upon their dearest rights, and ruled them with insolence and undisguised tyranny. His misrule was endured for about two years, when the people heartily seconded the measures of his fellowproprietors for his removal. When they heard of his usurpations, they sent him letters of recall, with an order from the king to appear in England to answer charges of disloyalty and other grave offences. Sothel was compelled to retire from the office in 1692, when he withdrew to North Carolina, where he died two years afterward. It was during the administration of Sothel that the Huguenots in South Carolina were as fully enfranchised, or granted the liberty of citizens, as if they had been born on the soil. This act of enfranchisement was repealed in 1697.

Colonel Philip Ludwell, of Virginia, and then governor of North Carolina, as we have seen-a man wholly unconnected with the interests of the province-was appointed the successor of Sothel. When the people found that a part of his mission was to restore the authority of the proprietors and impose upon them the absurd "Fundamental Constitutions," they were

restive under the rule of even so good a man as he. He was authorized to inquire into grievances, but had no power to redress them; and after a brief and unhappy administration, he gladly retired from the chair of state.

The proprietors were now satisfied that they could never impose upon the people of the Carolinas the form of government framed by Locke and Cooper, and after a trial of about twenty years, the scheme was abandoned. They sent good John Archdale, as we have seen, to govern both provinces under more simple forms of government prepared by the people themselves. His administration was short, but highly beneficial. He healed dissensions; established equitable laws, and with the spirit of a true Christian he set a true Christian example of toleration and humanity. He made no distinction on account of religious creeds in the choice of his council. He cultivated friendly intercourse with the surrounding Indians, and ransomed Indian captives who were exposed for sale as slaves. Chiefs of tribes formerly hostile were sometimes seen at his table; and two Indian maidens were paid servants in his family. With the Spaniards at St. Augustine he cultivated friendly relations, for the liberal spirit of the Quaker could respect the faith of the Roman Catholic. With keen foresight he introduced and promoted the growth of rice on the seacoasts of the Carolinas, some seed having been given to him by the captain of a vessel from Madagascar. It was distributed among the planters; and so the cultivation of this valuable cereal was begun in our country. The name and deeds of John Archdale were kept green in the memory of the Carolinians for generations.

From the close of Archdale's administration, the history of the two Carolinas should be considered separate and distinct, although they were not politically disunited until 1729.

G

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CAROLINAS-DISAPPEARANCE OF THE INDIANS-INTERNAL COMMOTIONS-EMIGRANTS FROM FRANCE, SWITZERLAND AND GERMANY-AN INDIAN RAID AND MASSACRE OF WHITE PEOPLEFURTHER TROUBLE WITH THE INDIANS-SOUTH CAROLINA THE GOVERNOR MAKES WAR ON THE SPANIARDS IN FLORIDA-WAR WITH INDIANS-POLITICAL TROUBLES~SOUTH CAROLINA INVADED BY SPANIARDS AND FRENCHMEN THE FOE EXPELLED-AN INDIAN LEAGUE-REVOLUTION IN SOUTH CAROLINA THE TWO COLONIES BECOME ROYAL PROVINCES GEORGIA-re RELIGIOUS MISSIONARIES THERE-OGLETHORPE AND THE SPANIARDS IN FLORIDA-CONDITION OF THE GEORGIA COLONY-OGLETHORPE INVADES FLORIDA-THE SPANIARDS INVADE GEORGIA -PUNISHMENT OF A DESERTER-THE SPANIARDS DRIVEN OUT OF GEORGIA~~~OGLETHORPE IN ENGLAND-GEORGIA BECOMES A ROYAL PROVINCE.

HEN the good Archdale had left the impress of his example and teachings upon the Carolinians, both provinces began their career of permanent prosperity. Although they were politically united, each acted independently of the other from the close of the seventeenth century. Both made a steady advance in population and wealth, and the arts of refined society.

The North Carolinians turned their attention to the richer lands away from the sea; and hunters trapped the beaver and otter in the waters far in the interior among the hills. The Indians along the sea-board had melted before the warmth of civilization like snow in the sunbeams of spring-time. The powerful Hatteras tribe, that numbered about three thousand when Harriot healed King Wingina, were reduced to fifteen bowmen in the year 1700. Another tribe on the Chowan had entirely disappeared; and the remainder of the savages in that region had been defrauded of their lands and driven back into the deep forests, when they and their brethren there perished by hundreds by the vices and diseases of the white man. The broad domain from the sea to the Yadkin and the Catawba then lay almost uninhabited, and invited to its bosom the skill of the husbandman with promises of wealth and comfort.

At about that time the freedom of the North Carolinians-" every one of whom," it was said, "did what was right in his own eyes, paying tribute to neither God nor Cæsar"-was disturbed by an attempt, in 1704, to establish there the ecclesiastical dominion of the Church of England.